Is watching TV all we do at Christmas?

New data shows that slouching on the sofa is now just a small part of our contemporary festive routines

What is Christmas to you? Some Victorian dream of carols round the fire and children playing hide and seek while a kindly uncle slices the turkey? Or the Hollywood vision of small-town joy after a banking collapse and near-drowning? Do you kneel in a barren chapel on a selfless vigil? Or is it all a bit more 21st-century?

Fortunately, the market-research chaps know the answer. We are, perhaps, more scrutinised than ever before, and it's but the work of a moment to combine extensive consumer studies and electronic data from Nielsen, Barb, Rajar, Google, the Internet Advertising Bureau and, for reasons that need not concern us here, Jarlsberg cheese, in a relatively unscientific fashion, to map out the contemporary Christmas Day.

According to recent research, half of us intend to spend Christmas at home, although only a third of us expect to travel to spend it with another family member.